Hi Neil,
thank you for the quick reply. I will indeed ask for the detailed print-outs from the pathologist. The Prednisone treatment obviously is not a long term solution given the side effects, so my presumption is that the goal is to achieve a stable count that is high enough to be acceptable in terms of bleeding risk and then hopefully do nothinge else. At least that would be the case for an ITP condition. So I guess the trick is to be able to tell if that is indeed what I have.
The term used by the hemotologist to describe the marrow was a bit colloquial: "the cells responsible for platelet production in the marrow were looking 'haggard'" While the other two lineages looked very good. I have read that MDS and ITP are not completely separate, in that MDS can have some autoimmune aspects to it:
http://online.haematologica.org/thj/2004/6200414a.pdf